Photos: The passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego

Updated 8:34 AM ET, Sat February 16, 2013

Photos: The passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego11 photos

Passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego – The story of celebrated Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera is often told in terms of a couple deeply at odds, personally and artistically. She was diminutive and frail, a tortured, self-taught artist who left behind a small yet deeply personal body of work. He was large and bombastic, the "great Mexican muralist" whose frescoes and murals of peasant life and historical scenes still adorn public spaces in Mexico and the United States. But a new exhibit at Atlanta's High Museum featuring work by the couple aims to capture their shared passion for politics, Mexico and each other, despite a tumultuous relationship.

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Photos: The passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego11 photos

Passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego – The exhibit, "Frida & Diego: Passion Politics and Painting," is the largest exhibit ever mounted of their work together. It also brings together some of their most recognizable works under the same roof, including Kahlo's self-portraits with her animal companions. Her favorite pet spider monkey, Fulang-Chang, appears in a number of her self-portraits. He was a gift from Rivera.

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Photos: The passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego11 photos

Passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego – The exhibit also includes two reading rooms that invite visitors to take a pause from the exhibit. Designed by contemporary Mexican designers Hector Esrawe and Ignacio Cadena, the red reading room features a reimagined version of Kahlo's bed, where she spent months recovering from a trolley car accident that left her nearly paralyzed at 22. It's also where she taught herself to paint, installing a mirror on the ceiling so she could paint herself. Over the years she would return to the bed to recover from unsuccessful operations and miscarriages.

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Photos: The passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego11 photos

Passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego – Kahlo is best known for her self-portraits, which reflected her mixed European and indigenous heritage along with Mexico's cultural traditions through references to folk art, traditional jewelry and indigenous clothing, the museum's program notes. Still, as a card-carrying Communist for most of her adult life, she was hardly traditional in her social or religious mores. In "Self-Portrait as a Tehuana (Diego In My Thoughts)," she depicts herself in traditional Tehuana attire in an act of solidarity with the Zapotec women from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec near the Mexican state of Oaxaca. In post-revolutionary years, "upper-middle-class women in Mexico City adopted the traditional attire of the Tehuanas to denote overt sexuality in the face of conservative social mores of demure femininity," the program notes.

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Photos: The passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego11 photos

Passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego – Rivera's early works reflect the strong European influence in his artist education and formation. He followed the Mexican Revolution from Paris, where he lived from 1911 to 1921, rubbing shoulders with Pablo Picasso and his avant-garde contemporaries while experimenting with different styles, including Cubism, the one that would inspire later works. His time in Paris also informed his artistic politicization through his relationship with Russian artist Angelina Beloff and her circle of fellow emigres, who introduced him to communism born of the Russian Revolution.

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Photos: The passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego11 photos

Passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego – The couple relied largely on private commissions for a living, both from clients and friends like Natasha Gelman, whose husband, Jacques, was a producer of films featuring Mario Moreno Reyes, the comedian known as Cantinflas. Kahlo and Rivera both painted portraits of the Moravian-born Gelman in 1943; Rivera's hung in the salon of the Gelman's' home in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

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Photos: The passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego11 photos

Passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego – Rivera earned international acclaim from his work as a muralist for Mexico's Ministry of Education in the 1920s. He later used details of the murals in paintings and lithographs. Scenes of rural life evoking a sense of pride and homage to Mexico's indigenous culture became recurring themes throughout his career, reflecting his and Kahlo's deep sense of nationalism.

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Passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego – Kahlo paid homage to Mexico's cultural heritage through folk art traditions like the use of retablos, or small devotional paintings that traditionally use religious iconography. "A Few Small Nips" is based on a true story of a jealous husband who killed his wife, but is also thought to express Kahlo's grief over Rivera's affair with her sister, Cristina.

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Passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego – By the 1930s, Rivera's artistic talents and charisma began to attract wealthy American patrons including Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, who convinced her husband, John D. Rockefeller, to commission a Rivera mural for the lobby of the soon-to-be-completed Rockefeller Center in New York. Rivera proposed a portrait of workers facing symbolic crossroads of industry, science, socialism and capitalism, convinced that his relationship with the Rockefeller family would allow him to insert an unapproved representation of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin into the image. When he refused to remove the offending image, he was barred from the site and the mural was demolished. He later recreated the frescoes in the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City.

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Passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego – Kahlo wore plastic corsets most of her life because her spine was too weak to support itself. She often painted them when she was bedridden or recovering from surgeries. This one, on loan from the Blue House in Mexico, depicts a hammer and sickle in a nod to her devotion to Russia's Communist Party and the fetus of the unborn child she was never able to give birth to.

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Passion, politics and painting of Frida and Diego – The exhibit notes that while Rivera was the more famous artist during their lives, "Kahlo's posthumous fame has eclipsed that of Rivera, who died three years after her, in 1957," with a number of biographies, films and even an award-winning hit film starring Salma Hayek securing Kahlo's cult status in pop culture. Scholars have held her up as one of "modernism's most profound women artists" while Rivera's artistic reputation declined "with the onset of the Cold War and the rise of Abstract Expressionism."